Pat Shepherd

TOGAF study help?!?! There is an app for that!There is a app out on the iTunes store that seems like a possible study guide. Have not used it and don’t have a review of it yet, but thought it is intersting enough to point out.https://itunes.apple…

There are 3 BPM Process Accelerator Packs available now (Accelerator Packs Available ) as discssed in my earlier post: https://blogs.oracle.com/enterprisearchitecture/entry/bpm_process_accelerator_packsThere is a new and very useful white paper on…

There are 3 BPM Process Accelerator Packs available now (Accelerator Packs Available ) as discssed in my earlier post: https://blogs.oracle.com/enterprisearchitecture/entry/bpm_process_accelerator_packs

I saw this article and thought I’d share it because, even we EA’s have bad days and the 7 points listed are a great way for you to hit the “reset” button.From Geoffrey James on INC.COM, here are 7 ways to change your view of things when, say, you are h…

In this “insane graphic” featured in an article in Business Insider’s article titled “This INSANE Graphic Shows How Ludicrously Complicated Social Media Marketing Is Now” – opened my eyes to just how large the Social Computing Landscape really is …

In this “insane graphic” featured in an article in Business Insider’s article titled “This INSANE Graphic Shows How Ludicrously Complicated Social Media Marketing Is Now” – opened my eyes to just how large the Social Computing Landscape really is …

Recently, there has been a lot more talk about mobilizing corporate applications. One of the customers that I work with wanted to know how they can mobilize their BPM applications. There are a couple ways to…

In as much as EA is about simplifying, streamlining and consolidating business processes, pre-built business processes can be very useful to lower the barriers to adoption of BPM-thinking. That is to say, hav…

Just recently, I was asked to provide some advice to a customer on how to adopt SOA Governance, specifically the Oracle Enterprise Repository (OER), in a step-wise and rational way. It seemed like sage enough advice to publish here

Here is what they were trying to do which is similar to what other customers are doing:

So it can be successful – but you don’t want to boil the Governance Ocean – at least not all at once. In a word, I’d advise getting a firm understanding on which services you want to govern (probably not all of them) and the types of things you want Governance to do for you. Once you have that, you can move forwards in a stepwise approach that reduces the effort AND complication. Realize that installing OER is only a small part of the puzzle. You need to have the right Org structure (official or unofficial) in place and the right incentives and rewards to help motivate people to “do the right thing” such as to reuse services instead of writing their own. Then you need the right processes to for people to follow. It’s the notion that:

Governance = PEOPLE + TECHNOLOGY + PROCESSES

Let’s say there are 50 key services to manage – for discussion purposes. Here is what I’d do at a super high level:

Get your top 50 key existing web services in OER using the Harvester if possible. Otherwise just take some time to add them manually. Make sure these are the relatively static PROXY services from OSB.

Be sure to assign one or more people to OSR as administrators/architects to help keep things in order

Add the correct lifecycle stage to them

Add the right classifications/taxonomy to them

Add documentation such that developers know how to use the service (i.e. can download a doc or visio or whatever that explains it)

Add any and all XSD, WSDL and other files that people would need to download to actually use service

Add a section to the OER home page that explains to users about the WL Gore SOA program, schedules and contacts – make it a place people go for some critical PROGRAM-level information – SELL what you are doing here…

Get developers used to using the tool through an in-house training

Use the reports to get a management view into the SOA program and help fund/support what you are doing

Then – start entering future state services to track as they go from inception to deployment in the life-cycle

Things that add complexity that you can add later IF they add value to what you are trying to do:

Install OSR / set up

Enable publishing to OSR

Set up harvesting of SOA/BPEL projects

Set up/enable automated approval workflows

Synch up performance metrics from OSB or OEM back into OER

Assign CAS (custom access settings) settings to individual assets

And so on. But add these later after the basics are down.

So – I hope this helps anyone else who wants to begin a SOA Governance effort using OER (with OSR, OSB and OEM as secondary stages after initial success).